


Five Cursed by Harrenhall & One Who Was Not

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 10:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six holders of Harrenhall and their various fates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Cursed by Harrenhall & One Who Was Not

Harren the Black 

He laughs to himself, a painful, dry sound that echoes oddly in the empty chambers. Everyone else has fled, everyone else who called themselves a thinking man, but Harren has resolved that he will not move, not for any standing army, not for any beast of land, and not for any beast of air. He thinks on the dragons with a scornful expression, imagining the impotent rage of their riders when their breath proves to be insufficient to breach the fortifications of his pride, his love, his hall. So he sits in his chair, closes his eyes, and waits. And when the great winged creatures swoop down with breath of flame, and as the walls shiver and the ceiling crumbles, the laughter turns to screams, but no one can hear the difference.

 

Danelle “the Mad” Lothston

She doesn’t really bathe in blood; that’s nothing but smallfolk gossip, but Lady Lothston permits it to be spread about. The fantastic is only the ridiculous, and it hides the truth so well. No one would believe her actual rituals, how she takes her youngest maid, hand-picked from the village, and slowly drains her, imbibing the blood in a silver chalice, mixing it with herbs that she’s secretly cultivated herself. Such witchery is easily undetected, and when the girl inevitably takes sick, fades, fails, dies, it’s chalked up to homesickness, to the frailty of youth. Danelle knows frailty all too well. When she sees the old woman in her looking glass, she shrieks, and replaces the cover before she loses what little sense remains to her. 

 

Shella Whent 

She thinks on the fallout from the tourney, the fete that she regrets most of all, and clutches her fist to her lips to stay her grief. Shella does not sleep well these days with the war on, her men spread across the land for butchery. She thinks on the silver prince, the northern maiden, and a blue crown of roses and she weeps. _It is all that an old woman can do_ , she thinks, _all that an old woman, an old fool, is good for_.

 

Roose Bolton

He reclines on a bed of wolfskins each night, the fur as soft as the newborn cubs that it has been taken from, and a less distracted man might see the irony in such an ornament. But Roose Bolton cares not for fripperies, or double meanings, or clever asides. His mind is bent on an alliance, a wedding not his own, an opportunity. Whether or not it bears fruit will be in the telling when he at last quits this odd castle and journeys north. In the meantime, there are far more important matters than cursed castles and the ghosts that may live there. 

 

Vargo Hoat

They keep him hungry, Clegane’s men, who he curses when he knows that they are out of hearing, chaining him to the worst of the cells and taking their turns pissing on him, marring his bedraggled finery, their ugly laughter the only companion that he has in his isolation. They love taunting him, standing in front of him stuffing their ugly faces with roasted boar, the grease running in rivulets down their chins. When he has been sufficiently starved, they begin carving at him as though he were a roast, although by this time, Vargo is so insensate that he barely feels the blade. And the next day, when the hulking brute brings him a platter of roasted meat, so tender that it falls from the bone, he gorges himself, sucking his fingers for the last shred of flavor, hardly knowing why the men are so amused by the sight.

 

Bonifer Hasty

Bonifer tries to be good, and for the most part, he is, clearing his mind of the terrible rumors that soar around the gift that he has been granted. He wishes to come to Harrenhall as he wishes to come to the penitent; without judgment, without malice, without forethought. But while he kneels each night to pray for the souls who live and for those who have died, he is haunted by faceless imaginings, men burning as they scream, wild-eyed women brandishing knives, blood always running, eyes always weeping.


End file.
